Welcome to the site! Do you have any videos we could look at? There's a forum here - http://thesandtrap.com/f/4180/member-swings - where you can post your swing and some very knowledgeable instructors and members will post some things for you to try.

I have a bad habit of hitting the ground before the ball as I have a fear of boning the ball.

I also tend to have a very low ball flight and done seem to get my balls up in the air.

I can also seem to hit my 8-7 irons as far as a 5-4 as I hit them much better and cleaner.

Any advice... God I sound bad

Hi----this is a problem I also have suffered from. I found that for me it was caused by one of two things, or sometimes both!! Standing too near the ball causes me to hit "fat" shots, especially with the longer irons, but the other cause is "collapsing" at impact, by which I mean not hitting against a firm left side----I cure this by raising my left shoulder at address, so there is more of a shoulder tilt, and then straightening my left knee forcibly on the downswing., so hitting against a straight left leg.

As for standing too near the ball at address, if you drop the club butt onto your left leg, it should touch just above your knee----another test is to release your right hand after taking up your address position, and allowing your arm to move backwards, away from the ball. If you are the correct distance from the ball, your hand should go straight back from the grip----if it deviates away from you, you are too near the ball and vice versa.

Try one, or preferably both, and I think you will find your problem disappears magically! I hope so. Good luck...!

Well, not in an official capacity and it's not guaranteed, but post it and see what happens. What have you got to lose? Take a look at the other member swing threads to see what response they got and see for yourself.

Most likely reason for fat shots is not getting your weight transferred forward far enough and fast enough. Search through the 5sk video thread for Key#2 videos. Also video yourself and take a look at what your noggin is doing on that backswing, if it is drifting backwards away from the ball it can be difficult to get a proper weight shift. This is referred to as key#1. I would start there and also, as Nevets suggested, take some video and post it in a "my swing" thread. Take extra care with your angles when shooting video.

I'm on an iPhone so I can't really do much linking but Nevets put most of the pertinent links up ^^^^^^^ there in his post.